


Mother Is the Name for God

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:18:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Leia dreams of a beautiful woman with long curly hair. Sometimes, she's smiling brightly, and sometimes, she's sad, but Leia knows, deep in her heart, that this is her birth mother, and that she loves Leia very much.





	Mother Is the Name for God

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. -William Makepeace Thackeray

*

Leia learns she's adopted very young. There's no fanfare about it, and no drama either. 

A visitor from Imperial Center makes a remark to Mama that even a six-year-old can tell is rude, about the Alderaanian people's nerf-like gullibility if they'll accept a queen who isn't a biological descendant of one of the Elder Houses, and she'd be better off designating cousin Sarvaad as her heir. Mama tells him that while Alderaan is certainly an upstanding member of the Empire, she is in charge of internal Alderaanian affairs, and will designate as her heir whomever she pleases. 

After the mean man leaves, Mama and Papa sit Leia down and tell her that even though she is not their biological daughter, they love her more than anything in the galaxy. 

"The Elder Houses rarely care about bloodlines," Papa says, with what Leia will recognize years later is the easy privilege of someone born into an Elder House. 

"Only to make sure nobody who is too closely related reproduces," Mama adds. "To us, nobility is all in one's actions, not one's genes." 

Leia isn't quite sure what that means, and Mama and Papa seem to realize it, because Papa says, "It is what you do that makes you a good person, Leia, and worthy of respect. Not whatever blood is running in your veins." He gives her a small, sad smile. "Your biological mother was one of the best people I've ever known, and a very dear friend. Alderaan would be proud to claim her as our own, as we are proud to claim you, Leia."

"Where is she, Papa?"

"She died, Leia, right after you were born. She is with the stars now. But she loved you very much, and gave you to us so we could love you, too."

That seems right and just to Leia. Of course as many people as possible should get to love her. She is wonderfully lovable. Mama says so every day. She smiles and hugs her parents tightly. "Okay, Papa, Mama. I love you, too."

That night, and for many nights afterward over the years, Leia dreams of a beautiful woman with long curly hair. Sometimes, she's smiling brightly, and sometimes, she's sad, but Leia knows, deep in her heart, the way she knows when someone's lying to her, or how to take a turn on her swoop bike even when she's never flown the course before, that this is her birth mother, and that she loves Leia very much.

Sometimes she dreams of a boy as well, blond and dressed in white, but those dreams are less frequent and less clear, and she usually forgets them upon waking.

Leia tells her parents almost everything, but she never tells them this. This is her secret to know and keep.

It's with great surprise then, that on a visit to Theed in her thirteenth year, that she finds the woman from her dreams staring back at her from a portrait of Queen Amidala of Naboo. She gasps softly, and one of the other girls says, "She's beautiful, isn't she?" Leia can only nod in agreement. She sees little of Queen Amidala's beauty in her own reflection, but the determination in her eyes and the firm set of her chin? Those Leia recognizes from her mirror every morning.

She doesn't mention this to her parents, either. There must be a reason they've withheld the name, and Leia knows enough not to question. Secrets are kept for good reasons. She learned that early on as well.

But for her application to the Alderaanian Junior Legislators League, she writes an essay on Queen Amidala and the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo. There isn't a lot of information about it on the holonet--Naboo might be the Emperor's homeworld, but it is still a small Mid Rim planet without much beyond plasma and textiles to offer the wider galaxy--but it's enough to flesh out her three thousand word essay, even after Papa makes her remove all mentions of the Core world negotiators who came to the planet to assist the Queen, or the pilots who destroyed the droid fighters that attacked Theed.

Her application is accepted with full marks, and Leia's rise through the ranks is rapid. She is a sharp, incisive speaker with little patience for rhetorical flourishes that sound pretty but mean little. When her father retires from the Senate, the better to aid the growing Alliance to Restore the Republic, Leia runs and wins his seat.

Her acceptance speech is modeled after Padmé Amidala's, with calls for the wealthy Core worlds to do more to support the endless influx of refugees from less fortunate systems, for Imperial justice to be tempered with mercy, and for Imperial peace to be accompanied by freedom.

It is a speech that wins accolades across the galaxy; Leia has won over the holonet and the pundits much as she had her parents' court and her own teachers. 

The Emperor, however, seems less impressed, when she is presented to him along with the rest of the new senators. 

"Pretty words from a pretty girl," he says with a hollow chuckle that sends a shiver down Leia's spine. He pinches her cheek in what appears to be grandfatherly affection but which feels more like a warning from her worst enemy. She grits her teeth and smiles through it, playing the innocent princess she's supposed to be.

She curtsies again and manages to say only, "Your Majesty is too kind," rather than any of the fiery rebukes of Imperial policy she'd had planned.

She moves down the reception line and can't shake that chill, nor the feeling that Darth Vader is staring at her intently, the red lenses of his mask impenetrable and terrifying.

"Senator Organa," he says shortly when it's her turn to be introduced to him.

"My lord," she replies, her voice stronger this time, and her chin lifted in imitation of that long-ago portrait of Queen Amidala. She doesn't bow to him, even though she probably should. She squares her shoulders and forces herself to walk away without twitching, though she can still feel that heavy red gaze like the scope of a rifle between her shoulder blades.

Over the course of her work in the Senate, in the Alliance, with various coalitions for sentient rights and organizations that provide aid to underserved populations, and even on Outer Rim worlds where the Republic was barely a presence and the Empire has little hold, she discovers Amidala is a symbol to many. 

On Coruscant, she is mourned as the tragic last victim of the Separatists, the final terrible death in that long, wasteful war, and she is remembered as a staunch ally of the Emperor's, though Leia is sure that is only propaganda, and far from the truth. 

On Naboo, she is a saint, a legendary queen who some say will return when Naboo is in crisis and needs her again. 

Among the Rebels, she is an inspiration, the leader of the Delegation of the 2000, along with Mon Mothma and Leia's own Papa. It is said there's a cell of young women who dress like her on their missions, though no one has ever seen them, and a version of her famous painted face finds its way onto the nosecones of bombers and troop carriers, or incorporated into the firebird that becomes their emblem as they grow stronger in number.

Over dinner in Mon's apartment, Leia absorbs all the stories about Amidala that Papa won't tell her--the way she bravely spoke out for what she believed in, even under threat of assassination; the time she and Papa investigated the murder of a fellow senator; how she saved Naboo and the galaxy from the threat of a terrible virus even at great personal risk.

"Padmé never worried about her own safety when other people were in danger," Mon says with a nostalgic smile. "She was always at the forefront, blaster blazing." She takes a sip of wine. "You remind me of her sometimes." 

"Thank you," Leia says, warmth bursting in her chest at the praise.

"And because of that, I'll tell you what I was too young and inexperienced to tell her, Leia. Be careful. You are not invincible, and the Senate is as dangerous as any battlefield."

"I know," Leia says, ducking her head, humbled, but not really. She herself may not be invincible (though it won't be until she stands on the deck of the Death Star and watches Alderaan destroyed that she actually understands that), but justice? Freedom? Mercy? These are all larger truths that will--that _must_ prevail if the galaxy has any hope of surviving.

It is her Mama's wisdom and her Papa's righteousness she clings to when she's held prisoner on the Death Star, and Amidala's sense of resolve that sees her through what becomes the second worst experience of her young life, as Vader tries to pull the location of the Rebel base from her mind. His rage and despair batter her as she withdraws deeper and deeper into her own head, walls thrown up behind her as she'd been taught as a child by a friend of Papa's, one of his most trusted agents. Leia had thought it a game at the time, but now she knows it was in deadly earnest, and she's more grateful to Fulcrum than ever for her long years of service and sacrifice.

There's little time to sleep or mourn after she escapes the Death Star with Luke and Han, but once it's destroyed, after the Alliance wins its greatest victory yet, and the survivors celebrate wildly in the long warm Yavinese night, Leia dreams, and Padmé Amidala is there, both proud and sad, a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes.

We're going to win, she thinks. We'll do it for you, she wants to say, and wakes with the words on her tongue. She cries, then, for the parents she's just lost, as well as the one she's never known, and then dries her eyes and gathers her resolve. We're going to win, she thinks again, as if repeating it will make it come true. They're going to win, even if she has to do everything herself to make it happen.

When Luke asks her, four years later, on another warm night on another distant moon, if she remembers her birth mother, she says yes. It is only a lie in the technical sense. And then he tells her that Vader is his father, and her father too, and she knows, deep in her heart, that it's the truth, even as she wants to reject it. But not Luke--she will never reject Luke. 

"Forget about Vader for a few minutes, Luke," she says after another great victory that's come with its own desperate costs. "Let me tell you about our mother, instead."

end

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Mother Is the Name for God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13100997) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




End file.
